Big Tech companies are making record profits while ordinary Americans struggle to pay their electric bills.
These Silicon Valley giants found a clever way to pass their massive costs directly to working families.
And Big Tech has one sneaky scheme that hit Americans in the wallet – and it’s about to get much worse.
Big Tech’s data center addiction is draining America’s power grid
A shocking new survey from energy tech firm Arbor reveals the true cost of the data center boom – and it’s not being paid by the companies getting rich off it.
Seventy percent of American households have watched their electricity bills jump over the past year, with many blaming energy-hungry data centers powering artificial intelligence.¹
The numbers tell a story of corporate greed and the situation keeps getting worse.
These massive facilities consume as much electricity as entire small cities just to keep their computer systems running day and night.
Big Tech is pouring up to $400 billion this year alone into data center infrastructure – more than the entire Apollo program cost, but crammed into twelve months instead of a decade.
Meanwhile, working families are left holding the bag for power bills they can barely afford.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans blame data centers’ massive energy demands for their rising electric bills, yet only 20% think the benefits justify the cost.
That’s because the benefits flow to Big Tech’s bottom line while the costs get dumped on everyone else.
Families forced to choose between electricity and groceries
The human cost of Big Tech’s AI obsession is becoming impossible to ignore.
In Baltimore, blind disability recipient Kevin Stanley watched his power bills jump 80% over three years.
"They can say this is going to help with AI, but how is that going to help me?" Stanley asked from his front steps. "How’s that going to help me pay my bill?"²
Judge Nicole Pastore, who lives near Johns Hopkins University, watched her bills spike 50% in just one year.
She’s now walking around her house turning off lights and unplugging chargers – desperate penny-pinching that shouldn’t be necessary for a working professional.
Even more heartbreaking, as a judge handling rental disputes, Pastore regularly witnesses poor families forced to choose between keeping their lights on and keeping a roof over their heads.
"It’s utilities versus rent," she explained. "They want to stay in their home, but they also want to keep their lights on."²
The statistics reveal just how crushing this burden has become for ordinary Americans.
A stunning 71% of families say they can’t afford more than a $20 monthly increase in their electric bills.
One in five can’t tolerate any increase at all.
The rigged system that lets Big Tech profit while families suffer
Here’s how the scam works – and it’s perfectly legal.
When Big Tech builds these massive data centers, they create enormous demand for electricity on regional power grids.
Bloomberg’s analysis of wholesale electricity prices shows that costs have jumped as much as 267% in areas near significant data center activity.
That wholesale price increase gets passed directly to every household and business on the same grid – even those living hundreds of miles away from the nearest data center.
It’s a classic case of privatized profits and socialized costs.
Tech companies pocket billions from their data services while everyday Americans pay for the infrastructure that makes it possible.
In the PJM grid alone – which serves 65 million people from Illinois to Washington, D.C. – data centers drove up costs by more than $9.3 billion in just 12 months.²
Those costs get spread across every family, small business, and fixed-income senior on the grid.
The political establishment enables Big Tech’s electricity theft
Look at who’s really responsible for this mess and it becomes clear why nothing gets done.
About one-third of Americans correctly blame tech companies for the crisis, versus 30% who point fingers at government and 25% who blame utility companies.¹
But the political class in Washington, D.C. is completely captured by Big Tech money and influence.
Instead of forcing these companies to build their own power plants, politicians let them feast at the public trough.
President Trump has reopened coal plants to help meet AI power demands, but that still doesn’t solve the fundamental fairness problem.
Why should a struggling family in Baltimore pay higher bills so that OpenAI can train the next version of ChatGPT?
The answer is simple: they shouldn’t have to.
Some states are finally starting to push back, but it’s too little, too late for families already drowning in higher bills.
Oregon passed the POWER Act to force data centers to pay fairer rates, while utilities in other states are requiring tech companies to put up more collateral.
But for every state that fights back, there are dozens more rolling out the red carpet for data center development without considering the impact on working families.
The future looks even worse for American families
The data center boom is just getting started, which means the pain for ordinary Americans will only intensify.
Data centers are expected to consume 4% of all global electricity by 2035 – that’s more than entire countries use today.
In the United States, power demand from data centers is set to double by 2035, reaching nearly 9% of all electricity demand.²
Some experts predict this will be the biggest surge in U.S. energy demand since air conditioning became widespread in the 1960s.
Here’s the kicker: this is happening while our electrical grid is already struggling with aging infrastructure and reliability problems.
The combination creates a perfect storm where families will face even higher bills, more frequent blackouts, and less reliable power.
All so that Big Tech can continue expanding their data center empire on the backs of working Americans.
Most people facing these crushing bills are taking personal action rather than demanding systemic change.
They’re cutting back on energy usage at home, reducing other spending, and making costly energy-efficient upgrades to their houses.
Only 9% say they would advocate for political solutions to force Big Tech to pay their fair share.¹
That needs to change, and it needs to change fast.
The time has come for Americans to demand that politicians choose sides: will they stand with working families struggling to pay their electric bills, or will they continue enabling Big Tech’s theft from the public?
The answer will determine whether the data center revolution becomes a tool for prosperity or just another way for Silicon Valley elites to get rich while everyone else gets poorer.
¹ Emily Forlini, "Many Americans Blame Rising Electricity Costs on AI. They Don’t Think It’s Worth It," PCMag, October 8, 2025.
² Josh Saul, Leonardo Nicoletti, Demetrios Pogkas, Dina Bass and Naureen Malik, "AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring," Bloomberg, September 29, 2025.
